Stop the presses —

“Syrian Electronic Army” hacks NPR publishing system, edits articles

Headlines changed to "Syrian Electronic Army was here."

NPR's Web publishing system and several of the news agency's Twitter accounts were hacked yesterday by a group supportive of the Syrian government that calls itself the "Syrian Electronic Army."

"Late Monday evening, several stories on the NPR website were defaced with headlines and text that said 'Syrian Electronic Army Was Here,'" an NPR statement published in a NPR.orgnews story on the incident said. "Some of these stories were distributed to and appeared on NPR Member Station websites. We have made the necessary corrections to those stories on NPR.org and are continuing to work with our Member Stations. Similar statements were posted on several NPR Twitter accounts. Those Twitter accounts have been addressed. We are closely monitoring the situation."

Sophos's Naked Security blog published a summary of the hack, including a screenshot of a Google search showing some of the headlines edited by the Syrian Electronic Army:

The Syrian Electronic Army's Twitter account stated, "We will not say why we attacked @NPR ... They know the reason and that enough #SEA #Syria." Sophos notes that "[t]he motive for the hack is unclear, although it's likely that the hackers have not been impressed with NPR's coverage of the situation in Syria." This seems to be supported by another Electronic Army statement on Twitter saying "you can ask @deborahamos" why the hack occurred. NPR's article notes that "NPR's Deborah Amos has done extensive reporting about the conflict in Syria and in the course of her reports has told of the hard toll the fighting there is taking on the Syrian people."

The hackers also posted a screenshot of an internal NPR e-mail informing editors that the publishing system had been compromised and that "several stories were hacked." The screenshot appears to show an NPR employee's e-mail inbox. We've asked NPR if its e-mail system was compromised as well and will provide an update if we receive one. (UPDATE: NPR replied to us, but declined to offer any further comment.)

According to Sophos, "it's not the first time that the Syrian Electronic Army has made headlines in the computer security world. Last month, for instance, the group—which is said to support Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime—hacked into the official BBC Weather Twitter account and posted a series of bizarre messages." Al Jazeera's website was also attacked by the Syrian Electronic Army in January 2012.

18 Reader Comments

Heard something about that on NPR this morning as well. My first thought was "Doesn't the Syrian Electronic Army have something more pressing going on that that they should be focusing their attention on instead of defacing websites in another country? I don't know, maybe something like a civil war in their back yard?"

I thought the same thing. Why are they wasting their time on site defacement? Sure it gets their name out there but it just seems.. well.. gimmicky. With a name like Syrian Electronic Army, I expect more.

So has there been anything to tie them to Syria besides their name that they came up with?

What are the chances that's just a red herring and they're just a bunch of hackers from who knows where, who are up to the same old hacking/defacing tricks, but are looking to push the blame on an already unpopular regime?

I thought the same thing. Why are they wasting their time on site defacement? Sure it gets their name out there but it just seems.. well.. gimmicky. With a name like Syrian Electronic Army, I expect more.

Ah didn't even read the headline last night when it happened. I was confused because I was browsing NPR front page the moment hack occurred... Just thought it was a technical glitch. One minute it was a headline about Boston with a picture and the next moment it was a Syrian headline with the same Boston picture. The attack also took away access to the Boston article from the front page. Clicking on it resulted in a white skeleton page with no article.

See, the mistake that they made was assuming that NPR is similar to government run Syrian news agencies. That's enough to show how little clue these guys have about western culture. This is equivalent to just pushing down an old lady on the street to show how hardcore you are.

They should have used this opportunity to spread their message: "We're the last secular Arab state, fighting against jihadists armed by islamist governments. US people please make your government stop aiding the al-qaeda rebels."

That's a much more sympathetic message, likely to garner some support and interest among Americans, than "We hacked NPR because fuck 'em."

I'm not an Assad supporter but at least his men didn't force women to wear the veil, burn down churches and hang postmen off the post office.

They should have used this opportunity to spread their message: "We're the last secular Arab state, fighting against jihadists armed by islamist governments. US people please make your government stop aiding the al-qaeda rebels."

That's a much more sympathetic message, likely to garner some support and interest among Americans, than "We hacked NPR because fuck 'em."

I'm not an Assad supporter but at least his men didn't force women to wear the veil, burn down churches and hang postmen off the post office.

I was with you until the last part there. They may not specifically do those things, but the level of abuse that they have visited on their people both before and during the revolution makes it difficult for me to even use the "well at least he's not a terrorist" trope (to the degree that "terrorist" still retains meaning in the broad sense).

They should have used this opportunity to spread their message: "We're the last secular Arab state, fighting against jihadists armed by islamist governments. US people please make your government stop aiding the al-qaeda rebels."

That's a much more sympathetic message, likely to garner some support and interest among Americans, than "We hacked NPR because fuck 'em."

I'm not an Assad supporter but at least his men didn't force women to wear the veil, burn down churches and hang postmen off the post office.